I personally can't stand phone support. It always takes way longer than it needs to, and I can't do anything else during it. Just firing off an email is far more efficient. Easier to do after office hours too.
I recently had a company email me saying:
> In this case, your review of___ has been flagged because we couldn’t verify its authenticity, and on that basis we’ve removed your review from our platform.
> While we’re confident that this is the right call, we appreciate that sometimes we get it wrong. If you think there’s been a mistake here, please do let us know by replying to this email and a member of our Content Integrity Team will review this decision with you.
What happens when you reply to that email as instructed?
> Thanks for reaching out. Unfortunately, this email address is not monitored and this is an automated reply.
Instead they direct you to some long ass form on their website asking about the URL of the review I'm contacting them about, which I have no idea (it was a response to a "how was your customer service experience, please rate us), and I'm not going to spend my time trying to find where it was. The whole experience was by email, I don't know if it even has a URL, but it's a required field on the form.
The original email thread that they told me to reply to should have all the information they need, but instead of even generating a link that pre-fills it into the contact form, they just throw all the context away and say "go to our website and fill out the form" because my time is worth nothing to them.
The extra irony is that I would complain to them about their service doing this, but there's no way to contact anyone useful with feedback.
Honestly I assume it's all on purpose because if I bothered to fill out the form it would cost them 5 minutes of someone's time to have them review it.
I take customer phone calls at my job so not a lot of sympathy for the companies trying to optimize helpfulness out of existence.
I think they've entirely outsourced their first line support to taxpayers via the CFPB and have no process to fix anything without you filing a complaint against them to get the ball rolling.
I call up the call centre - agent says he can see the same problem but he doesn’t have access to do anything about it. He told me to print out a paper change of address form to change my address from my current address to my current address, sign it, scan it (he emphasised it had to be signed pen to paper, and the form even says that), and email it in. I’m hoping that fixes it.
Part of the problem seems to be - I have multiple accounts with the one broker (my domestic stock account, trust accounts for my kids, a separate account for foreign stock), and they maintain separate addresses for each account, and they can get out of synch. And the broker is owned by a bank, and I have products with the bank, and the bank also has separate addresses for each product, plus the bank and the broker’s systems are kind of half-integrated/half-not in an opaque way which contributes to this kind of problem. And the bank also owns an insurance company, and I have a policy with that insurance company, and they’ve got the same half-integrated/half-not thing going on with their insurance company too.
(Of course, I'd hate it if this was by force)
the only reason those jokes are not current is that either the phone line is now gone, or because you don't call it, knowing in advance that it's torture. The phone menu and tiered human support is worse now than it's ever been. ime the foreign accent problem is a little better, but i also rarely call so ymmv
A lot of companies basically deny you service unless you call.
It would cost a fortune to pay support and developers to launch a full investigation every time something funny happens. So having slow support encourages users to only call if it’s reproducible and a real problem.
People's initial problem statement may be insufficient to even establish identity let alone nature of problem and solution. This is usually established by repeated follow up questions sometimes repeating questions to get the actual answer because it turns out they had no idea about the actual answer or indeed don't know what words mean.
Due to both of the above even simple issues are likely to become 12 step marathons with the associated cost of context switching to their problem 12 times. Worse due to the low cost of initiating an exchange they are likely to do so even when they could have resolved the issue in 10 seconds with google or even turning their head into the on position.
Your suggestion would turn a well funded support center into a team of professional shit shovelers trying to clean the Aegean stables with teaspoons.
An actual call queue intentionally and constantly drops matters too unimportant to invest 5-10 minutes in resolving and makes people do the whole shebang in one go by having them answer the follow up questions now.
I purchased a used ipad and the only way to get the thing turned on was to talk to a customer support agent, who had to basically manually flip a database column for me.
Besides these days you can either set a callback, or, just plain do work while you're on hold.
Physical pharmacies in general have also gone way down hill in terms of customer service. I’ve literally gone into the store and stood at the counter for like 10 minutes waiting for someone to even acknowledge my existence. It’s not that they don’t see me, they just don’t care. They are overworked, so I kind of understand not being responsive, but a simple, “We’ll be with you in a few minutes,” would be nice. It’s pretty dehumanizing to stand there being ignored. And if you speak up, they usually snap at you, and then are rude when they do get around to helping you.
Lo and behold, a few months later, I get an apologetic email with a $300 credit. It was obvious they didn't even read my complaint, and therefore won't fix it, but I'll take the $300.
And no, they didn't cause me anywhere near $300 in harm by any measure.